The topic of this article is going to seem to most as way outside my normal stomping grounds of economics and finance, but to those who know me well it will not be so strange. I am somewhat of a fitness buff. Having started weightlifting in high school, it has been a habit that I have kept with me ever since. “Strong mind, strong body†is a bit of a personal mantra of mine that I hope to be able to stick with throughout my life.
One of the earliest things you learn in weight lifting and nutrition is how little an impact the actual exercise component plays in human physiology. While being active is certainly important, your typical gym rat will only expend a couple hundred more calories per day due to their exercise. This has a minimal impact in creating a caloric deficit and reducing fat in the body. Lifting weights really only serves one goal, to stimulate your muscles to grow and become stronger. For evidence of this, just take a look at the people competing in power lifting and strength competitions. None of them will come close to winning a Mr. Olympia competition, but Mr. Olympia certainly won’t be able to pull a transport truck engine 100 feet either. Both, while very strong, have different goals and they adjust their diets towards those ends.
In order to lose weight you have to diet, period. There is no way around this. The question becomes how to effectively do this. To that end there has been no shortage of literature and fads that come out on an annual basis. Our bodies are the culmination of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary progress. You’d think by now we would have figured out how to eat properly. Well, we did and it’s only recently that we have forgotten what our bodies really need to be lean, strong and healthy.
The effects of Morgan Spurlock’s film “Supersize Me†have spurred on the low-fat, lean meat and high carb diet. Vegetarianism and veganism have exploded in popularity all over the west. However humans, by and large, have never eaten this way and our evolution has adapted us to an entirely different kind of diet. For a good debunking of Spurlock’s many (though not all) spurious claims about fast food I urge my fellow readers to watch a movie called “Fat Headâ€. The producer, Tom Naughton, does an excellent job at breaking down the phony science behind the “low fat†diet craze, the many myths about cholesterol as well as the misconceptions about saturated fats and other fatty foods. Tom’s brother just so happens to be a fan of Austrian economics and has recently written a pretty darn good summary of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
At the end of the movie Tom does something that many would consider seriously insane, he goes on a saturated fat binge, eating nothing but steak, sausages, cheese, eggs, coconut oil, cream and everything else we’re told by the government and mainstream dieticians to avoid like the plague. The result? Tom not only lost weight, he lost fat as well. His HDL count (“good†cholesterol) went up, LDL (“bad†cholesterol) went down and a number of other health indicators actually improved. None worsened. This is the exact opposite of what mainstream nutrition would tell you would happen. How can this be?
In recent decades there has been a surge of diets such as Protein Power, Atkins, Paleo and Primal that have had stupendous results for those that go on them. They all work for a very simple reason; they all strictly control the intake of carbohydrates in to the body. The recommended daily allowance of carbohydrate intake by most health authorities is 300 grams. In Fat Head, Tom restricted his carbs to about 100 grams. This is the secret, because carbs do something to your body that no other energy source (fat or protein) does, they raise your blood sugar levels. Your body can’t tell the difference between a potato and a mound of sugar, the digestive response is basically the same. In fact, whole wheat breads score about the same on the glycemic (which measures how close a food is to pure glucose) index as refined sugar!
What happens after a heaping helpful of carbs is your body mobilizes the systems needed to deal with the rising blood-sugar levels. A major part of this is insulin, which transports energy in to your muscles and fat cells for storage. There’s a sequence in Fat Head that does a great a great job at explaining how this all functions. And so a major part of losing weight, and specifically fat, will always consist of controlling your insulin levels. If you’ve ever noticed that you suddenly get extremely tired at the office every day at around 2 or 3pm then you know what insulin does. This is your insulin levels crashing after a carb-rich lunch.
During a high fat, low carb diet your body makes a few changes to itself. It sweeps away the hormones and other compounds in the blood that are designed to deal with carbs and replaces them with compounds designed to deal with fat. Once you have switched over to this state, called ketosis, your body starts looking towards your fat reserves rather than muscles in order to deal with any caloric deficit you have. A caloric deficit is defined as when you expend more calories in a day than you consume, and this is what we want in order to lose fat. But it only works right when you first train your body to look to fat for energy, which is what happens during a low-carb diet.
Here in Ontario, there is a company called “Dr. Bernstein†that specializes in helping obese people lose weight. I have personally witnessed the results in two of my friends, who each lost staggering amounts of fat weight in under a year. Of course, going right back to your high-carb diet will only bring the weight back again. And so one must make a low carb diet a way of life, though the extremes followed by Dr. Bernstein aren’t something even they would recommend you do forever. On a low-carb diet, males can realize higher levels of testosterone and both males and females will benefit from higher levels of growth hormone, which is essential in maintaining bone density and a youthful look in later years.
The movie Fat Head does a great job at showing how the low-fat diet craze is just another government entrenched program (likely financed in part by grain, soy and corn farming companies) and we shouldn’t be surprised that its effects were the opposite of what was hoped for. It is a diet built on foods that we as a species haven’t been eating for even 1% of our history. For more information on this I recommend at the very least watching Fat Head. For those that want more technical information on low-carb, ketogenic diets then I would suggest reading “The Ketogenic Diet†by Lyle McDonald. For the truth about sugar, that seems to be the actual culprit for the west’s health problems readers can search around for Robert Lustig, MD. His groundbreaking research is sure to amaze and inform.
Tags: carbohydrate, carbs, diet, exercise, fat, Fat Head, fitness, food pyramid, health, keto, ketosis, Morgan Spurlock, Supersize Me, Tom Naughton
Excellent ideas shared here – thanks
Some good points.
1. Cut down grains – good
2. Eat more saturated fat – good
3. Exclude trans fats – good
4. Vegetable oils – From nuts (including coconuts only) Polyunsaturated oils and spreads contain trans-fats as a side effect of processing, unless carefully cold pressed.
5. Vegetable oils are not that nutritious, fish oils are to be preferred for omega 3.
6.Fructose is garbage, it should only be ingested as a byproduct of eating fruit and honey.
You're absolutely correct.
i eat plenty of "saturated fat" and protein and i lowered my carb intake, as a result i have lost 24lbs and still losing!
Great info, thank sir!
Interesting comments, my responses:
1. “Low-carb” does not equate to “no-carb” that’s just silly. Low carb diets feature an abundance of vitamin, mineral and nutrient-rich vegetables. These also provide plenty of fiber. To suggest that a low-carb diet would not be able to maintain the necessary amounts of these nutrients is disingenuous.
2. Your body does not “only absorb glucose”. There is another energy molecule, ketones, which the body also uses quite effectively. I mentioned this specifically in the article so I’m not sure why that’s being ignored.
3. High-protein diets absolutely do not have a deleterious effect on the liver or kidneys. This has been studied extensively and the evidence is clear. Unless you already suffer from a kidney or liver condition, there is no risk to increasing your protein or fat intake.
4. Simply reducing caloric intake and expecting to lose weight is simplistic at best, and dangerous to your health at worst. This is why most diets end in failure. The caloric mix suggested by Ryan is taken straight from the FDA food pyramid, which has been proven completely and totally wrong. “Good Calories, Bad Calories” does a great job of summarizing the last 50 years of research to show this. I should have mentioned this book right in the article because it’s truly a monumental piece of work.
"…but the anti-carbohydrate craze has gone too far. "
LOL
I'll believe you when grocery stores close their bakery sections and stop selling zero and low-fat products. That day won't be arriving any time soon.
Go to http://www.marksdailyapple.com/a-metabolic-paradi…
for a rebuttal of the conventional wisdom about carbs and fat.
I also have to point to one factual error in the above article. Horlacher says: "This is the secret, because carbs do something to your body that no other energy source (fat or protein) does, they raise your blood sugar levels. Your body can’t tell the difference between a potato and a mound of sugar, the digestive response is basically the same."
In fact, protein does raise blood sugar, but does so a few hours later, once the body has had time to convert it into glucose. It's important to remember that the body can only absorb glucose, so whether you're eating fat, protein, or carbohydrates, if the energy is getting into your cells at all, it does so in the form of blood-borne glucose AND requires insulin production.
In addition, there are a few big differences between a potato and a mound of sugar. For one thing (and as per my previous comment), sugar has more calories. For another thing, sugar has a *much* higher score on the glycemic index. Thirdly, potatoes contain all kinds of important micronutrients – and fiber, which by the way is vital for anyone eating a lot of protein.
Remember, kids, not every rise in blood sugar is bad. Your blood sugar is supposed to increase with every meal.
"In fact, protein does raise blood sugar, but does so a few hours later, once the body has had time to convert it into glucose."
No it doesn't. Your body needs to maintain blood glucose levels with in a very narrow range for optimal functioning. Whats really happening is that carbohydrates send your blood glucose way up. Then your body produces a lot of insulin to bring it back into that range as fast as possible, because high blood glucose is toxic (see uncontrolled type 2 diabetes for results). Because of immediacy of the issue, so much insulin is produced, that your blood glucose eventual falls below the desired range. Then your body fills it back up with protein using gluconeogenisis.
See the link below. Increased protein intake does not increase blood glucose. gluconeogenisis is actually a hormonal regulated reaction. Not a reaction that takes place spontaneously during digestion; like the conversion of starches to glucose is. http://www.ketotic.org/2012/08/if-you-eat-excess-…
"if the energy is getting into your cells at all, it does so in the form of blood-borne glucose AND requires insulin production"
Also wrong. I'm not sure if your talking about storage in fat cells, or supplying energy needs. See the "UNDERSTANDING FAT STORAGE" in the link below for the former http://www.livestrong.com/article/527281-does-the… an for the latter see http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0158.htm
I respectfully – but emphatically – disagree.
People who primarily lift weights and do strength training completely over-emphasize body composition when it comes to overall health. Horlacher is certainly correct that diet has a greater short-run impact on body composition than exercise.
The problem is that "achieving a particular body composition" is NOT the point of either diet OR exercise. Body composition is merely one of five components of physical fitness. Diet and exercise is about more than just losing weight. Once you lose weight, there are other issues to be considered – regimen longevity, weight maintenance, hearth and lung health, kidney health, joint health, etc.
Obviously, if someone is overweight, losing weight is a pressing concern. Increasing a person's fat intake above the 20%-of-total-calories mark may help in adjusting body composition and losing weight – mostly through the fact that people who do so typically end up eating more protein. And since the human body can only absorb so much protein (and expels the rest), a "high-protein diet" is really just a back-door method of reducing one's total caloric intake.
So it's not the increase in fat or protein, but simply the reduction in total calories. The problem with high fat, high protein diets is that they are extremely hard on the liver and kidneys. This might be worth it in the short run if you have to lose a lot of weight, but it is DEFINITELY not a long-run health strategy. The impact such diets have on the liver, kidneys, heart, and pancreas are well-documented. If a reduction in total calories is really driving the weight loss, then why put your organs through dietary stress?
Again and again, research has shown that fewer calories are what drive weight loss. Again and again medical science demonstrates that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables consisting of about 18% fat, 22% protein, 60% carbohydrates is the best diet for long term health and fitness. You don't have to be afraid of fat, but the anti-carbohydrate craze has gone too far.
Anyone who values their heart and lungs should be engaging in regular cardiovascular training, and it is almost impossible to engage in regular cardio if you're not eating a substantial amount of complex carbohydrates. So while those who focus on weight training may be able to get away with a lower-carb diet, the rest of us require complex carbohydrates and should not eliminate them from our diet.
"Anyone who values their heart and lungs should be engaging in regular cardiovascular training, and it is almost impossible to engage in regular cardio if you're not eating a substantial amount of complex carbohydrates."
Realy now? from http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1…
"Impaired physical performance is a common but not obligate result of a low carbohydrate diet. Lessons from traditional Inuit culture indicate that time for adaptation, optimized sodium and potassium nutriture, and constraint of protein to 15–25 % of daily energy expenditure allow unimpaired endurance performance despite nutritional ketosis."
I saw this documentary back in September and boy did it change my life. I love Tom's libertarian style (there's one line about the food business being almost as big as government, to which Tom says "and we give these people our money on purpose!) ….. A great documentary; I recommend it to everybody.
I cannot describe how much healthier I feel since going "paleo." Not to mention I lost like 15 pounds when I wasn't even trying. In addition, eating right allows muscle to build effortlessly. I've never joined a gym, yet I've developed abs. Just further proof that the State is the root of all evil, lol
Indeed, it changes from your usual topics.
" how the low-fat diet craze is just another government entrenched program (likely financed in part by grain, soy and corn farming companies)"
Exactly. In the movie, TV clips from the late 60s show experts questionning this obession with more cereal products